Whitman's lilacs

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I already knew Walt Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed, the poem he wrote mourning our just slain President Lincoln in the spring of 1865.

I found another lilac poem by our rustic American poet, titled "Warble for Lilac-Time" written in 1870. I so appreciate his ability to sing songs of nature as well as of human joys and ills. It seems he was remembering that other lilac poem and the death he elegized, and spring is helping him overcome his memory of grief, just as the lilac blossom and its smell first helped him find solace in the death of his leader. In the first, he broke a sprig of lilac to place on the passing coffin. He warbled for the dead, for death. He wrote:

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed,
And the great star early drooped in the western sky in the night,
I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

But in this poem written five years later - Joy in the first line. Time heals. Nature heals. Beauty heals.

Whitman's birthday is close - May 31 - born in 1819. He died March 26, 1892 - twenty-two springs after the one he wrote in this poem.



Warble for Lilac-Time

WARBLE me now, for joy of Lilac-time,
Sort me, O tongue and lips, for Nature's sake, and sweet life's sake--and death's the same as life's,
Souvenirs of earliest summer--birds' eggs, and the first berries;
Gather the welcome signs, (as children, with pebbles, or stringing shells;)

Put in April and May--the hylas* croaking in the ponds--the elastic air,
Bees, butterflies, the sparrow with its simple notes,
Blue-bird, and darting swallow--nor forget the high-hole flashing his golden wings,
The tranquil sunny haze, the clinging smoke, the vapor,
Spiritual, airy insects, humming on gossamer wings,

Shimmer of waters, with fish in them--the cerulean above;
All that is jocund and sparkling--the brooks running,
The maple woods, the crisp February days, and the sugar-making;
The robin, where he hops, bright-eyed, brown-breasted,
With musical clear call at sunrise, and again at sunset,
Or flitting among the trees of the apple-orchard, building the nest of his mate;

The melted snow of March--the willow sending forth its yellow-green sprouts;
--For spring-time is here! the summer is here! and what is this in it and from it?
Thou, Soul, unloosen'd--the restlessness after I know not what;
Come! let us lag here no longer--let us be up and away!
O for another world! O if one could but fly like a bird!
O to escape--to sail forth, as in a ship!
To glide with thee, O Soul, o'er all, in all, as a ship o'er the waters!

--Gathering these hints, these preludes--the blue sky, the grass, the morning drops of dew;
(With additional songs--every spring will I now strike up additional songs,
Nor ever again forget, these tender days, the chants of Death as well as Life;)
The lilac-scent, the bushes, and the dark green, heart-shaped leaves,
Wood violets, the little delicate pale blossoms called innocence,

Samples and sorts not for themselves alone, but for their atmosphere,
To tally, drench'd with them, tested by them,
Cities and artificial life, and all their sights and scenes,
My mind henceforth, and all its meditations--my recitatives,
My land, my age, my race, for once to serve in songs,
(Sprouts, tokens ever of death indeed the same as life,)
To grace the bush I love--to sing with the birds,
A warble for joy of Lilac-time.

*hylas are tree frogs

Publication information, found at Whitman archive:

"Warble for Lilac-Time." Galaxy 9 (May 1870): 686. Whitman revised the poem for reprinting in Passage to India (1871), in the New York Daily Grahpic (12 May 1873), in the group "Passage to India" of Leaves of Grass (1872) and Two Rivulets (1876), and in its present form in Leaves of Grass (1881–82).